Eatonville is named after a dairy farm that supplied milk to a department store's lunch counter downtown. The Eaton family farmed here from 1891 into the 1940s, and the name outlasted the herd by most of a century.
The farming came first, and not from the Eatons. Peter Shaver bought the hundred acre Applewood Farm in 1830, west of the road then called Brown's Line, the corridor Highway 427 now occupies. The community organised around a school, the Swamp School of 1844. Then the Eatons, and the sources conflict. The Etobicoke Historical Society has Timothy Eaton buying 200 acres personally in 1891. Wikipedia has Eaton's the company buying a 400 acre farm in the 1890s, with the name reaching the neighbourhood by way of that school, renamed in the family's honour. The man or the company, two hundred acres or four hundred. Nobody has reconciled it.
Nobody agrees where Eatonville ends
Eatonville is not a City of Toronto statistical neighbourhood. It appears in neither the City's current 158 neighbourhoods nor the older 140. It is a historic village name in continuing local use, and its edges are a convention rather than a line on a map. The common description is north of Dundas Street West, south of Rathburn Road, bisected by Highway 427, flanked by The West Mall and The East Mall. The historic school section ran much further west, and today the name straddles four City neighbourhoods.
The freeway divides two decades of housing
The streets east of Highway 427 went up mainly in the 1950s, and those west of it in the 1960s and 1970s. On the 2021 census, three quarters of dwellings in the Etobicoke West Mall neighbourhood predate 1981. Expect brick bungalows, sidesplits, backsplits and two-storey detached houses. I will not quote a typical lot width, because no published source gives one for Eatonville.
The rest of the stock is what buyers underestimate. In that neighbourhood, apartment units in buildings of five storeys or more outnumber detached houses by more than three to one, and almost all went up between 1959 and 1974 along The West Mall, The East Mall, Markland Drive and Rathburn Road. Several back onto low-rise streets. Rebuilding concentrates on Eastglen Crescent, Crendon Drive and Swan Avenue.
Cloverdale Mall, and a plan already cancelled once
Cloverdale Mall opened on 15 November 1956 on former Eaton farm land, was enclosed in the 1980s, and its department store anchor ran through Morgan's, The Bay, Zellers and Target, which left in January 2015. It works now as an everyday-needs mall anchored by Metro and Rexall.
Owner QuadReal applied to amend the official plan and zoning for the 32 acre site on 17 July 2020. Mattamy Homes joined phase one in September 2022, and City Council approved phase one on 6 February 2024: a 33-storey tower and a nine-storey building at The East Mall Crescent, 606 units. A revised master plan followed in March 2025, taking the site to nine blocks, 11 to 48 storeys, 5,268 units and two public parks over a stated ten year timeline.
Then in October 2025 the first tower was cancelled. Mattamy and QuadReal terminated The Clove, telling purchasers sales had stayed below their own termination threshold. Businesses had closed ahead of a demolition that did not happen. One outlet reported Council approving the full plan on 24 February 2026, but the City's record still showed the file under review, and I could not corroborate it. Confirm the current status with City Planning before you rely on any of it.
Two subway stations, and one of the busiest roads in North America
Eatonville sits between the two western terminals of Line 2. Islington station opened on 11 May 1968 and Kipling on 21 November 1980, Kipling as the end of the line and the interchange with Kipling GO. A seated ride is usually available and Bloor-Yonge is seventeen stations east. I will not quote a door to door time, because no published TTC or Metrolinx figure exists and you are adding a bus leg anyway: the 50 Burnhamthorpe, 111 East Mall or 112 West Mall.
The other half is the road. Highway 427 runs through the middle of Eatonville, north to the 401 and south to the QEW and the Gardiner. It is Ontario's second busiest freeway and the third busiest in North America, and the segment between Burnhamthorpe and Rathburn carried more than 400,000 vehicles a day in 2016.
A departing city hall and a farmhouse that stayed
The Etobicoke Civic Centre at 399 The West Mall, built between 1956 and 1958, is being replaced by a new civic centre at Dundas and Kipling due to complete in 2028. No source says what becomes of the West Mall site afterward, an open question for anyone buying on Crendon or Broadacres. Across the road in Broadacres Park stands the Applewood Shaver House of about 1850, birthplace of James Shaver Woodsworth, founding leader of the CCF.
What I tell buyers to check
Aluminum wiring is the signature issue here. The Electrical Safety Authority says homes built between the mid-1960s and the late 1970s may have aluminum wiring, which matches the build-out west of the 427. ESA does not require replacement. Its position is that the wiring is safe where connections and terminations are properly made with approved devices. Use a licensed contractor experienced with aluminum and give the ESA Certificate of Acceptance to your insurer, because some insurers will not write or renew a policy without that inspection. Confirm insurability before your condition period expires.
Asbestos, and vermiculite in particular. Health Canada notes asbestos was used mainly before 1990 to insulate against cold and noise, which covers essentially every house here, and vermiculite attic insulation may contain it. Sealed behind walls it presents no significant health risk, but drilling and sawing releases it. Budget for testing before you open up a bungalow, not after.
The era carries its own list. Sixty amp service is common in 1950s builds and has to go before a kitchen renovation, an EV charger or a heat pump. Cast iron stacks and clay or galvanised laterals mean scoping the drain to the lot line. Basement headroom is often low, and splits carry partial-height foundation walls and below-grade moisture at the lower level.
Walk the block at rush hour and again at eleven at night. Highway 427 noise varies enormously over short distances, depending on berms, fencing and what sits between, and a weekday afternoon showing tells you nothing. The same applies to houses fronting Burnhamthorpe, Rathburn, Bloor, Dundas or either Mall.
The arterial edges are being rebuilt at thirteen to forty-eight storeys. Interior low-rise streets are protected by Neighbourhoods policy, but live applications run along The East Mall, The West Mall, Markland Drive and Renforth Drive, and at 530 The East Mall an apartment building is to be demolished and replaced. Two have gone to the tribunal on appeal.
Burnhamthorpe Collegiate is not a conventional high school. Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute on The East Mall is an adult and alternative school. Silverthorn Collegiate on Mill Road is the nearest conventional public secondary for much of the area. Catchments move with boundary reviews, so confirm any school with the board.
Comparables are a methodological problem here, not a formality. Eatonville is not a City neighbourhood, it spans four of them, and the freeway divides two construction decades. A comparable from the other side of the 427 may be a different decade and build type, and figures published under the old Islington-City Centre West name sit on a geography the City no longer uses. Always ask which side of the 427, and which era.